[理学]第二章大气波动学.ppt

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * On the earth, however, large-scale topography and continent-ocean heating contrasts provide strong forcing for longitudinally asymmetric planetary scale time-mean motions. Such motions, usually referred to as stationary waves, are especial1y strong in the Northern Hemisphere during the winter season. Observations indicate that tropospheric stationary waves generally tend to have an equivalent barotropic structure; that is, wave amplitude generally increases with height, but phase lines tend to be vertical. Although nonlinear processes may be significant in the formation and maintenance of stationary waves, the climatological stationary wave pattern can to a first approximation be described in terms of forced barotropic Rossby waves. When superposed on zonal-mean circulation, such waves produce local regions of enhanced and diminished time mean westerly winds, which strongly influence the development and propagation of transient weather disturbances. They thus represent essential features of the climatological flow. Stationary Rossby Waves The most significant of the time mean zonally asymmetric circulation features is the pattern of stationary planetary waves excited in the Northern Hemisphere by the flow over the Himalayas and the Rockies. It was shown that the quasi-stationary wave pattern along 45o latitude could be accounted for to a first approximation as the forced wave response when mean westerlies impinge on the large-scale topography. More detailed analysis suggests that zonally asymmetric heat sources also contribute to the forcing of the climatological stationary wave pattern. Some controversy remains, however, concerning the relative importance of heating and orography in forcing the observed stationary wave pattern. The two processes are difficult to separate because the pattern of diabatic heating is influenced by orography. The discussion of topographic Rossby waves used a β-plane channel model in wh